Podcast Release WordPress Plugin Helps You Get Permission

According to MWGblog’s Michael W. Geoghegan, the Podcast Release WordPress Plugin creates a Podcast Release form. This is a permission form to use your voice and words in a published podcast, on your site. It provides a link to send to your interview subjects, along with an administration panel to customize the information for the release. When the guest visits the page, they enter in their information and check that they accept the terms and give permission to be interviewed and have that interview published. The Plugin then emails the information to all parties and you are set to go.

The neat thing about this Plugin is its efficiency. For those blogs which publish more than one podcast a week, and those who include more than one guest per podcast, this easy-to-use form would simplify the process.

It’s also version 0.1, so expect this to improve as more people put it through the wringer of use.

Didn’t Know You Need Permission to Podcast People?

So, you didn’t know that you need permission to use a person’s voice and/or likeness? Well, you do. For your personal protection, there is a body of copyright and intellectual property laws which say that you need to get permission first before publishing publicly any person’s personal, private, and intellectual property. In the simplest of terms it means you can’t publish pictures or sounds of someone or their likeness, which includes voice recordings, without their permission.

Why risk your podcasting site and reputation by not getting permission. Protect their rights and yours by getting a signed release and permission to use their voice in your podcasts.

A simple Model/Voice Release looks like this:

MODEL RELEASE
I hereby voluntarily and without compensation authorize pictures and/or voice recording(s) to be made of me. I hereby give permission to ____________ to use, reproduce, and distribute the video footage, photographs, or voice recordings, including my name. I hereby agree to release ________ from any claims, damages or liability arising out of such use or distribution. I understand that the use of my name, likeness, and voice recordings will be primarily for the purposes of ________ (examples: commercial use, education and/or promotion) by this/these organization(s). I have read and understand the foregoing and I consent to the use of my picture and/or voice as specified for the above-described purpose(s). I further understand that no royalty, fee or other compensation of any character shall become payable to me.

If Model is under 18: I, ____________________, am the parent/legal guardian of the individual named above. I have read this release and approve of its terms.

Space would be provided for printed and signed names and dates.

For more information on releases and examples of model/voice releases, see:

2 Comments

Karen Brewster has a paper on-line about the ethics and legalities of oral histories and other documentation which is subsequently made available through the Internet (originally collected or donated for archival and research purposes). This may be of interest to folks transferring family and other records.

…investigate the issues of oral history on the Internet. The purpose was to review existing sites that have mounted oral history on the Web to see how they have handled the ethical and legal issues surrounding copyright and use permission, contact our program sponsors in rural Alaska about their concerns about Web access, post a report on the Web for broad review, and make some recommendations for how to proceed on this delicate matter with our programs.

I was actually looking for permissions relating to wordpress user roles, but I’m happy I got here. I didn’t know about the need of a release for people in podcasts, but now I do – bookmarked! Thanks :)

[…] any form of words for the release. The user needs to insert those once the plugin is activated. Lorelle Van Fossen has a post which references the Michael Geoghegan plugin and provides a simple form of words for a […]